It's Not Just About Money

This may be the most important column I’ve read in a while:

When I decided to run for US Senate, 10 years had elapsed since my last previous run for office. In politics, where most everything has a short half-life, that is… forever.

I view campaigns through what I call the 3Ms model (hopefully, that giant corporation won’t sue my ass; or maybe it safer to come up with a slightly different moniker): Message, Media and Money. In a nutshell:

• Message. A successful campaign needs a message that is authentic, relevant and which connects with voters.

• Media. A quality message means nothing if no one finds out about it. To me, media comprises anything that actually helps get a candidate’s message to voters. This can comprise everything from expensive TV all the way down to retail door-to-door knocking (and everything in between).

• Money. Media (and organization) can be expensive - frighteningly so. While many DC consultants use money as a measuring stick of viability, my view was I simply needed enough financial resources to run a successful campaign with the end goal being to win the election.

Side Note: after two close prior runs (one of which I may have actually won), I got destroyed in my Senate race. The rise of Trump and MAGA in the already reddest state in the country was simply too much to overcome.

As the author in the article I linked to above relates, the lack of any Dem/progressive leaning “sustainable media advocacy outlets” severely hampered my runs (and runs of all other Dems). As I related to the chair of the DCCC at one point (using a mountain climbing analogy - hey, I live in… the mountains), “After my first campaign I felt like I reached the Hillary Step of Everest, mere meters from the summit. Yet, one year later when I decided to run again, I felt like I was starting all over back at base camp”. Simply put, there was minimal outside support - media wise and even initially, financially - to bolster my candidacy/policies in any meaningful way. There had been no sustainable advocacy in the interim between races. While we absolutely adapted our media strategy to include social media, live online forums, etc., it was never going to be enough.

I believe there are two prerequisites to long term success in any venture or organization: tenacity and adaptability. To put it bluntly, from an infrastructure perspective, Dems lag in both compared to the opposition.

Read the column - if we want good policy, it’s worth our time and effort to find a way forward…